The Frugal Hearth: Stories of Simple Living and Living Well

Throughmyfingers

Just had a good catch up, well done on the savings so far this year  the clothes-cull sounded fantastic!! I am not sure how they all build up, I seem to get rid of a few bits here and there every few months and I am now 2 x Baskets full to list/donate, I'm with you on the tidy house/tidy mind so hoping its something I can learn to stay on top of and also have a birthday on the horizon so may follow the lead with the charity donations idea.  

I am along way off yet but I always thought having available credit that wasn't being used looked positive, this is likely as I am massively in the red so I need any green to then offset and bring my utilised down.  If you are pretty much DF does having lower available help?  Well done on the organised mornings, I struggle massively with it and as the boys are back to school in just over a week its something I am really going to try work on, that and reducing food spends! Have a lovely weekend x 

Elisheba

Hi @Throughmyfingers ☺️. Stuff really does just built up doesn't it! 

I have copied and pasted below section 6 from 'Boost you Mortgage Chances' on this website, which is where it talks about available credit.

6. Carefully manage your available credit

This is all about how much credit you have available to spend on credit cards and overdrafts. It's the difference between your combined debit balances on your cards and bank accounts and your combined credit limits/overdraft limit.

You need to strike a balance between not having too much available credit – as lenders may think you could rack up more debt by spending it all – and not getting too close to your limits, which makes it seem you're at the edge of your finances. Here's what credit agency Experian says:

• If you have debts, lenders prefer that they make up less than half of your available credit. To be really safe, try to keep any debts equivalent to 25% of your available credit. So if you've a combined limit of £10,000, lenders rather you use less than £5,000 of it, but ideally sticking nearer to the £2,500 mark.
  

• If you are using a decent proportion of your available credit, avoid lowering your limits so you're suddenly close to the edge. Similarly, don't have tens of thousands of pounds of available credit unnecessarily – new lenders get twitchy that you could suddenly be far more indebted than you currently are.

Be mindful that some lenders might also include buy now, pay later debts and available credit into their equations, particularly if you are heavily indebted to multiple buy now, pay later providers.

Sadly this is an art, not a science, and all lenders' views of how much credit you 'should' have differ. Try to average around 25% of your available credit, but if you need to use more then definitely keep it below 50% in all cases. Of course, if you can pay off debt, you should do so.

***

Once I had paid off all my cards and knew I had a little put aside in case of emergencies I closed almost all of them. I decided on which two to keep because with Amex I use it for daily spending to get the cash back, and pay it off in full each month. The BC was the oldest credit card I had so I thought having it for that length of time might look good on my credit rating.

It really does feel like a guessing game. When I had all off them theoretically I could have racked up about £40k of unsecured, high interest debt again, so I can quite see why banks wouldn't like the sounds of that. 

Now I have the two I'm not sure where the sweet spot is for available credit. Currently I've reduced it to £3k overall.  I think this month is a good example of the maximum I ever use the Amex in a month and its at about £600 (due to having a holiday earlier in the month). So I still won't be using 25% of my available credit ever, so maybe I should just close the BC, or reduce the credit to £200, or something like that. Not sure.

Good luck getting your red down!

Elisheba

Morning, chickadees,

Monkeys are all fed and I'm back in bed with a coffee. Very annoyingly the scales have added weight on the last two days, rather than taking me down to the 4 stone loss I wanted them to - very rude of them if you ask me! It's probably just hormones though, so I won't worry just yet.

Okay, so here are the things I want to get done this weekend -

🌊 Clear out the garage - I'm sort of dreading this as there is so much I don't know whether to keep or not. Should I keep my jam pan, despite the fact I can't eat jam any more? Or my ice cream maker - might be useful as I can't eat shop ice cream any more, but I've literally never used it. Every single thing is going to be a difficult decision I think 🤦🏼‍♀️. I'm not even going to touch the camping stuff or the Xmas decs. They can wait until they are used next.

🌊 Two or three tip runs to get rid of the garage stuff, although I've not booked any yet so don't know if any will be free.

🌊Hoover the house

🌊Dust the house

🌊Cut the grass

🌊 Weeding - should be much as I did it last week

🌊 Get washing done, dried and put away

🌊 Some nice walks with silly dog

🌊Food shopping - I have a list

🌊 Some boxes from a work organisation I chair that I need weed and sort. No idea what is in them as they are from someone who left in a hurry.

🌊 Some more knitting - practice makes perfect. Might watch some YT videos on how to hold the yarn so the tension is even. It's never something I've been able to do properly.

🌊 Have a go at my Murdle book - picked up in a bus stop and I love a good logic puzzle.

I think that's all for just now. I'll add to it as I think of things.

foxgloves

My weight loss really slows in hot humid weather, @Elisheba - almost certainly because the heat causes me to retain fluid, but it can be quietly ticking downwards in the background. I've weighed in this morning & lost 0.9kg - that is a lot for me in a week, but I think losing the fluid retention that was lurking at the time of my last weigh-in contributed.
I expect you are right about your temporary gain being hormonal. I remember back pre-menopause, I could actually gain as much as 5lb immediately before a period. 
Your decluttering sounds as though it is going fantastically well. I am looking forward to moving my efforts to sorting out my half of the shed.
F

Jellytotts

My weight could fluctuate by 8lb across two days at certain times of the month before menopause hit (like a truck) now it stays stubbornly the same, day in day out no matter what I seem to eat/do.  

Get rid of the jam pan and the ice cream maker, you can’t use one and haven’t used the other, let someone else get the use out of them.  

I’m great at decluttering things like that and often whizz round the house like a thing possessed but when it comes to my plants and craft room, no, I need it all….just incase.

KajiKita

Jellytotts said:

I’m great at decluttering things like that and often whizz round the house like a thing possessed but when it comes to my plants and craft room, no, I need it all….just incase.

Yup, me too, me too … <nods, whilst smiling wryly 😉>

KK 

Elisheba

Morning, frugal folks!

Looks like it's is going to be a lovely couple of days here in mid Wales. It may well be the last of the summer sunshine so I am aiming to be outside as much as possible to soak it in, and bank up my Vitamin D for the long winter ahead.

I have had a really enjoyable a couple of days catching up on the Prepping thread on this forum. Now, I am not a prepper in any sense of the word, whether for the more likely scenarios or otherwise. However, it did occur to me last winter that my camping stove being hidden in the garage somewhere wasn't much use at all with the power cuts I had at the time.

So it certainly couldn't hurt to be a little bit better prepared for some of the most likely problematic scenarios. So, and this has been the most enjoyable bit (for me), I have started making lists.

By my reckoning the most likely scenarios are either a power or a water cut, or being stranded somewhere in my car. So it would be useful to always have an emergency kit in the car, and a small emergency bag in the house.  The car kit could have the camping stove, and would be easy to bring in during power cuts, the the house bag could have the spare gas canisters for it so they never overheat in a hot car.

I'm still working on the finalised lists, but I'll share them once they are done. 

For a power cut, in the house I have the multi fuel stove so that would cover most cooking situations, but having a gas stove (used outside) just to heat water for coffee in the morning would be useful.

I always have a large supply of tea lights, so light would be fine. Ideally I would have one of those big Jack*ry storage batteries - useful for camping and power cuts, so I could keep working on my laptop, and charge my phone. They cost hundreds of pounds though, so more of a wishlist item.

If I do ever move to where I want to in Scotland a big storage battery like that will jump right up the list though, as there are often power cuts in those villages with the snow and being so high up. In the meantime, it might be an idea to get just a normal power bank for my phone. My last one has gone kaput and they are useful things to have.

Water wise, I refuse to buy big plastic containers of water. It's a waste of plastic and most likely wouldn't get used. It wouldn't hurt to keep a couple of biggish bottles in the car though. They would get used, most likely for rehydrating silly dog after a walk, and can be refilled easily enough.

In terms of a well stocked pantry, it occured to me a few weeks ago I really don't have one anymore, since I went low carb and gave all my carbs away. There isn't much that I can stock up on really - some tins of soups, pasatta and nuts are all I can really think of. I do have a good supply in my chest freezer of frozen fruit, veg and fake meat, but that's not hugely useful in the event of a long power cut. Although, chances are down here it wouldn't be more than 3 days, so would probably be fine.

So yes, lots of lovely planning and organising to think about! Something to do now I have decluttered pretty much everything! The garage went much quicker than expected yesterday - just the morning, and managed to get an appointment at the tip straight afterwards, so that's all sorted.

I put stuff aside for Freecycle, but thought I'd ask my family if they wanted anything first. Turns out they want about half of it! I'm not going up now until Xmas (touch wood) so thank goodness it can all stay in the garage and not get in my way!

I have to say I wasn't particularly brutal with the garage clear out. I kept the ice cream maker @Jellytotts although it is now in the house. If I don't use it in the next year, it can go. Also kept the jeelie pan (jam pot) as they are called in Scotland, with the excuse you never know when you will need a properly big pot, and it's not getting in the way in the garage. And I might make jam again if I can get the prediabetes in full remission and my body becomes less insulin resistant, or even if it's just for presents it's a possibility.

As I said yesterday, I didn't touch the camping stuff or the Xmas decorations. If I do sort out an emergency kit for the car then that might be an excuse to tackle the camping gear, but it's alright for now.

Other than that, took the excuse of being in big town for the tip to do some shopping at Aldi!. I totally forgot my list though, which I had written on paper when I was working the day before and had hidden my phone from myself. Still, think the only thing I forgot was cream cheese, and I can get that at the C00p is closer small town. Silly dog got a nice walk along the canal and back by the river while I was there as well. And then I felt so virtuous that I sat out in the back garden for the rest of the day reading the Prepping thread 🤣.

So after saying there was nothing I wanted to buy, I now have a long list. It's all on my 30 day think about it list, so will see next month if any of it has made the cut. So far I have a power bank, 25kg ice salt for winter (I already have a snow shovel), Kelly kettle (I probably won't get this - I've thought about it before but the £100 outlay doesn't seem worth it to me for all I'd use it), stock up the medicine kit (will definitely do this, even things like Strepsils I need to rebuy the sugar free versions), and servicing my bike. 

Today I have church once I finally stop drinking coffee in bed (and I've just remembered I need to wrap a birthday present for a friend there, so I had better get a move on). Then this afternoon I want to:

🌊Walk silly dog
🌊Cut grass
🌊Hoover house
🌊Wash car
🌊Clean bathroom 
🌊Dust house
🌊Stip and remake bed
🌊 Do a towels etc washing and get it hung out to dry 

Think that's all for today. So much for my Sabbath day of rest, eh? Maybe tomorrow though, if I get all that done today 😁. Enjoy your Sundays, everyone, however you are spending it ☺️. 

Elisheba

foxgloves said:

My weight loss really slows in hot humid weather, @Elisheba - almost certainly because the heat causes me to retain fluid, but it can be quietly ticking downwards in the background. I've weighed in this morning & lost 0.9kg - that is a lot for me in a week, but I think losing the fluid retention that was lurking at the time of my last weigh-in contributed.
I expect you are right about your temporary gain being hormonal. I remember back pre-menopause, I could actually gain as much as 5lb immediately before a period. 
Your decluttering sounds as though it is going fantastically well. I am looking forward to moving my efforts to sorting out my half of the shed.
F

Yes, it may well be the heat. Weighed myself again this morning and I am back down to the lowest I weighed this week - which is literally 1 gram off 4 stone! It's so annoying 🤣🤣🤣.

Well done on your 0.9kg loss! Some weeks just seem to go better than others.

foxgloves

Interesting post, @Elisheba. It sounded for a brief moment as though you'd snuck into our house & read the Emergency Planning List at the back of my diary, lol. I am a great believer in resilience & that almost all mainstream emergencies can be made easier by a decent level of preparedness. I don't class myself as a 'prepper' at all, but I am very definitely a planner. I do think it makes absolute sense to ensure we can all deal with the sort of emergency situations likely to come our way. 
F

Elisheba

Evening, folks,

Isn't it just lovely that tomorrow is another day off? And the weather for a bank holiday weekend has been smashing. Feels like a proper little holiday!

So update on today's tasks:

🌊Walk silly dog - ❌ This didn't happen! It was too hot by the time I got home from chapel.after coffee and a gab, and then in the evening I was feeling too tired. He had a busy day running around after me though, so didn't seem too bothered by it.
🌊Cut grass ✅
🌊Hoover house ✅ Well, downstairs and the stairs. Hoover needs to charge again before I can do upstairs.
🌊Wash car ✅ I am amazed I finally got around to this. Do you know I don't think I have washed my own car since about 2010? My ex and I were going to sell our runaround, and thought we would save money by washing it by hand. Because we were distinctly unpractical, it seemed a really good idea using rough scrubbers to get marks off. Car ended up completely scratched 🙄🙄🙄. It's a good thing we only ever expected to get £500 for it. Think that must have subconsciously put me off every doing it again but hand until.now! 
🌊Clean bathroom ❌ Meh, it can wait. Cat litter is changed, and I clean the loo and sink every night.
🌊Dust house ❌ 
🌊Strip and remake bed ✅ 
🌊 Do a towels etc washing and get it hung out to dry ✅ Also got it put away, and another washing done and hung out to dry.

Despite not doing a dog walk, my Fitbit has logged over 11k steps, so I've definitely been kept busy. I did get a bit of reading in the garden done, and this evening watched an episode of Our Farm Next Door on Channel 4.

Tomorrow I'll get a dog walk done early when it's cool, and get upstairs hoovered, and put the washing on the line away, but I think that'll be it for busy jobs.

Fancy an actual day off, although I've no idea what I'm going to do with myself. I don't want to spend any money and the car needs diesel which I'm trying to hold off on until as close to payday as possible (only because I want to take it from next month's budget, and not because I can't afford it this close to pay. Thankfully the days of being in dire straits before payday are behind me).

So it may well be reading in the garden, which I never really get bored of. I only have to think to 2 years ago in my little house in a town, with no views, and only a back path for a garden - and even that didn't get any sunlight due some over grown leylandii next door. So no, sitting out in the garden in good weather doesn't get old ☺️. I suppose if I do feel in need of a change of scenery I could just bite the bullet and get fuel, and then go for a coffee in town. Will see how I feel.

Right, getting quite sleepy now. Hope Sunday was good to you all.